Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Plain packaging decision leaked?

Ministers are to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes along the Australian model with legislation this year, after becoming convinced that the branding is a key factor in why young people start to smoke.

The legislation, to be announced in the Queen's speech in May, is also expected to ban smoking in cars carrying anyone aged under 16 years.

Why merely infringe on intellectual property rights when you can infringe on actual property rights as well, huh? What was it that David Cameron said in 2008?

"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end."

What a comedian. Sadly, the laugh's on us.

The Guardian quotes a "senior Whitehall source"....

"We are going to follow what they have done in Australia. The evidence suggests it is going to deter young smokers. There is going to be legislation," said a senior Whitehall source said.

We should remember that this is only an anonymous leak and may well turn out to be untrue. There can be no doubt that there are senior figures in the Department of Health, such as Andrew Black, the 'Tobacco Programme Manager', who are committed to plain packaging regardless of the evidence and regardless of which elected politicians are in charge. The extraordinary sums of taxpayers' money that have been spent on the campaign are testament to that, as are the numerous incidents of skullduggery that have made a mockery of the public consultation.

It may be that one of the DoH's activists has put out this anonymous briefing to put pressure on the government to go ahead with the policy. Let us remember what Deborah Arnott said about the campaign for the smoking ban in 2006:

It is essential that campaigners create the impression of inevitable success. Campaigning of this kind is literally a confidence trick: the appearance of confidence both creates confidence and demoralises the opposition.

On the other hand, if the government's decision has really been announced via an anonymous Department of Health leak, it will be a fitting end to a public consultation that has been characterised by secret meetings, dodgy dossiers and sock puppet lobbying. If plain packaging is introduced by a supposedly free market coalition despite 2 to 1 opposition in the consultation, it will rightly make people wonder whether what kind of democracy we live in.

[Editor's Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part Special CSP Investigative Report on whether the CDC incented local communities to adopt restrictive tobacco measures.]

ATLANTA — Stimulus.

The mere mention opens up a debate about whether federal funds were necessary to ensure our nation’s economic recovery. But are these funds having a direct effect on retailers’ tobacco business on a local level?

Perhaps. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 allotted $650 million to carry out clinical and community-based prevention and wellness strategies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enlisted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to allocate these funds through an initiative known as the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW).

“Communities Putting Prevention to Work was a two-year funding project that began in 2010 to address obesity and tobacco,” says Karen Hunter, CDC senior press officer.

A similar quasi-press release has appeared in the Mail today. Oddly, there is a sentence near the end which said that a DoH spokesman denied that a decision had been taken. So it looks as if the normal softening-up process is underway.

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."